The Effect Of The Earth’s#10YearChallenge
Another day, another social media challenge. In recent years we’ve had trends based on everything, from Netflix’s Bird Box inspired challenge to the Drake soundtracked ‘Kiki’ challenge With over 5.2 million participants, the ‘10 year challenge’ has seen various directions of glow as everyone posts photos of what they looked like back in 2009 compared now.
As the basis of a lot of social media stunts, it’s viral success is in part down to it being slightly narcissistic and also the familiarity of the concept – it being something we’ve seen before. In fact, as Buzzfeed’s Ryan Broderick pointed out, it’s been a trend that’s appeared annually since 2016 and although it’s nothing new, it’s still awoken the conspiracist in some people.
With Facebook not exactly being a shining light when it comes to handling people’s data, there were suggestions from people who know a lot more about this than me that this data could be used to train facial recognition algorithms. Which does make it all seem a bit Black Mirror-y and we all know how those episodes tend to end up…
To potentially avoid any data breaching consequences the hashtag has been co-opted by a growing number to highlight the dramatic changes that have occurred around the world in the last decade. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are slowly becoming awash with side-by-side comparisons of Amazon deforestation, melting glaciers, polluted waterways, and other environmental woes. In a tweet Arsenal’s Mesut Ozil compared the state of two icebergs, highlighting the shrinking ice sheets that continue to become a major issue. Whilst this message may have just been a moment of quick thinking from a somewhat controversial footballer’s media team its message of caring about the earth is a good one. With over 23 million followers, the things he puts out tend to get read, even if the majority of the replies are more concerned in what he does on the football pitch at the weekend.
